While it might be possible to revamp the Civ roads/railroads, I believe that we may be better off simply getting rid of railroads altogether. More than any other factor, railroads seriously unbalances and distorts the game, and makes the AI's task of invading your home continent simply impossible while making the defense of the home continent entirely easy and worry free.

The reason is simply that with infinite speed, infinite capacity railroads, it is easy to defeat any invasion force that lands on the home continent regardless of deployment or location of military production cities. If an invasion force of 8 units lands near a city and you have have 12 cities each defended by 1 unit, you simply activate each and every unit in all cities, instantly transport them over to the enemy, defeat the enemy force and then instantly transport them back to the original cities, and all of this is done in one turn!

Suppose though that railroads and even roads did not exist at all! If an AI lands near a city defended by 1 unit (or even 2), the AI can definitely take the city. Then the AI can march its 8 unit force and take a few more cities before your home guard can converge on the invaders since it will take some time before your spread out force of one tank in each city can converge on the enemy. Since there are no railroads, the AI might not even need to garrison the cities because even if empty, it will still require some time to reach the cities to take them over. By then those cities might have produced a tank (or two) already for the enemy! And while you have been busy emptying your cities and marching them off to meet the enemy, these cities have now become dangerously vulnerable. Another opportunistic AI sees this and decides now is the time to make it a two front war. Do you now still try to retake those cities leaving yourself weakened for enemy#2? (Remember now you cannot instantaneously defeat enemy force 1 and enemy force 2 in in two turns!)

By simply getting rid of railroads (and even roads), whole new possibilities now present themselves.

1. Deployment of forces for defense
Since it takes time to move units, you have to make decisions about where to concentrate and deploy your home guard. (Assumes of course that it is not possible, say, to mass 10 units in each and every city quickly and easily)

2. Importance of terrain
Despite all this attention to detail concerning movement and defense bonuses of terrain, roads/railroads make it largely irrelevant. Now it matters a great deal.

3. Importance of diplomacy
You've been invaded and are now massing your home guard for counterattack? better make sure another neighboring AI doesn't join the fun before you empty all your units in all your cities to engage the invader!

How can we have a Civilization game without railroads!?

1) Give all units a "terrain movement modifier" (eg. for infantry it might be: plains=1x, forests =1/2X and hills=1/4-1/8x; cavalry might have forests=1/4x and hills=1/8-1/16x), then simply make roads and RR a modifier of this terrain modifier (eg. Roads 2x and RR=3x). This makes a journey on RR only slightly faster than on roads (which is in turn only slightly faster than unimproved terrain!) It also makes all movement dependant on the unit type (although you could just make a single set of modifiers for all units based on terrain only!) Most important, the AI could still obtain a beach-head before you can muster the Home Gaurd!

2) Roads and Rail should have a capacity rating-this is the maximum stack size you can have moving onto a road/rail tile at any time. You could improve road/rail tiles multiple times to increase the capacity rating to reflect the construction of multiple lines, highways etc. There would be a limit, however, to how often this could be done!
Additionally some units should count as more than one unit for the purposes of capacity. Obviously, infantry and units would be equal to 1, but cavalry and knights would probably be equal to 2 and armour(and mech inf.) units may even count as 3! This puts even greater limits to the number of units you can muster for your defense and has the added bonus of discouraging people from building stacks consisting of nothing but armour!!

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you think of my alternative suggestions, and thankyou for putting the topic on the agenda!

If you're going to chuck out roads and railroads because of the way they impair the AI, lets chuck out every aspect of the game that the AI can't properly understand....I mean c'mon!

1) Reduce the base number of years per turn to about 5 or 10.
2) Increase the Movement allowance of all units or,
3) Have unit movement and combat occur at a different time rate to that of the normal turn (as is being suggested by the creators of "Clash of Civilizations" for their game)

So people, I've thrown down the gauntlet-what do you think, am I crazy, or do you agree with me? If the former, then why? If the latter, then which of the above suggestions, if any, would come closest to solving this problem...or if none of them will, perhaps you have some suggestions on how movement can be improved!

Think about it: when you play at the diety level, the pace of your research stays about with the actual way it went in history. The number of years per turn drops as you progress to reflect the dramatic increase in the speed of technological advancement - it really has no tie to any other facet of the game. The date is not important except as a timer. It lets you know how much time you have left and, to some extent, how you are doing in comparison to other games you've played.

Trying to match up the time increments and unit movement would be an impossibly, and perhaps needlessly, difficult task.

On another note, railroads should be toned down but you cannot remove them (or roads, for that matter) entirely from the game. The infinite movement of railroad is there to portray the lightning fast response times modern fighting forces have. The ability to react quickly to a single threat is not a factor; all that does is force the aggressor to use increasingly imaginative tactics. Wars are no longer fought by two massive forces finding a spot to meet and pounding each other until only one is left. To fight a modern Civilization war effectively an attacker must split the defenders forces using diversions and use unconventional attacks (i.e. spy units). Because of the effectiveness of rails, they become a prime target for an attacker, as was the historical case in WWII. Fast-moving mech inf units can break rail connections to a city before the defender can respond. Isolating your target is the most basic of the war tactics in Civilization.

The bottom line is this:
Do people want some semblance of tactical level manuevering of units or not? In other words actually controlling and moving individual units like tanks, planes, ships? If so, then I think that the movement rates of all units should together be balanced realistically.

quote: Originally posted by Your.Master on 05-10-2001 04:28 PM While I think RR's should be toned down, I agree with the logic that land units move too fast. Remember, WWII would only be 4 turns in Civilization II, and there were battles for every turn: on the large scale, railroads ARE effectively instantaneous even if not so on the tactical scale. What I think is that Airplanes and Ships should get speed boosts with tech. Also, I wouldn't mind if railroads were weakened but game time late in the game had turns that lasted a half-year or a season. That late in the game you'd hardly notice technological progress slowing down.

The only purpose of timescale is to mark technological progress. There is no way to reconcile that with movement of units nor do I think this is even particularly important.

What matters is good overall balance. Already I see that airports, paratroopers and RRs basically make the whole concept of tactical movement of individual units silly. So like I said, either balance movement of all units to be realistic IN RELATION TO ONE ANOTHER or just do away with tactical movement of individual units altogether and abstract everything the way is done with RRs, airports, and paratroopers.

1) Roads were used by the Roman Empire to racilitate the movement of chariots and such. Units who can take advantage of roads would be mobile units, infantry units shouldn't be able to use it as much. Later on in the game, when hover units (if there are such) become available, roads should be obselete and useless to facilitate the movements of these units.
2) Railroads are not something you can just get on anywhere and be transported. So, therefore, may I suggest that we have a transport unit that can take advantage of the railroads (trains), in which you can put units into and transport them (of course, there'd be a limit to the number of units you can put in a transport unit). Also, a limitation to how many units can be in a stack is also important. And since railroads aren't totally frictionless or give a unit infinite speed, may I suggest that it will not facilitate the movement of any unit other than that of the transport unit (which, should be limited to movement ONLY on railroads).
3) I think there should be some third generation of the road/railroads, just because the concept is cool. Like maglevs in SMAC. So how about having a magtube improvement that will allow infantry units to move faster (as you can't shove a big tank into a magtube).

In Civ3 the AI can't use your roads and railroads, because there is a thing called borders now that will prohibit them from using your roads, unless you allow them or you are in war with them. But it is kinda of cheap for them to use your roads and railroads when your are in war with them!!!

Roads were essential for the movement of all troops, even infantry, because it is faster and easier than tramping through woods and fields. Supply carts simply don't move where there are no roads and you have to use less efficient pack trains.

If you have the infrastructure in place, you can use it to your advantage. Use your head polymths, the scenario you described is what would happen in real life. Troops from all over the country would be transported, mostly be rail, to the problem area and would neutralize the threat. The thing you are overlooking is that if someone invaded the US, they probably would not be able to use the rail system because they wouldn't control any TRAINS!!

Also, roads should be changed upon the invention of the Automobile because it takes a very short time to drive across the United States. In fact, it is almost faster to drive than to take the rail.

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-14-2001 03:49 PM In Civilization's turn based system, railroad's movement allowance needs to be infinite because the minimum turn is a year. And in a year, I can travel across any length rail line. If you people are unwilling to give up your flawed turn based system, then you have to deal with the effects of railroad and infinite movement. [This message has been edited by SoulAssassin (edited May 14, 2001).]

FOR THE LAST TIME!
Time/Turn is only for measuring technological progress and cannot be interpreted literally for unit movement! On another thread, I've already proposed that time/turn timescale might be totally gotten rid of and turns simply called turns (with a very periodic year update for effect only).

But this point is BALANCE!
If indeed you hold that since 1year/1turn literal interpretation, then shouldn't ships all other units have basically infinite movement as well. Hell, since 1 turn=1 year, I should be able to instantaneously transport almost any unit!

Again, I say, let it be balanced! If units travelling on trains have infinite movement based on 1 turn=1 year dogma, then ships and planes and almost every unit should have close to infinite movement. I mean IRL, you actually can travel around the world a couple of times even on ships! But is this what you really want????

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-14-2001 03:49 PM If you people are unwilling to give up your flawed turn based system, then you have to deal with the effects of railroad and infinite movement.

Its not so much a question of what WE are willing to give up, or not. Its instead a question of what Firaxis already have implemented. The game IS turnbased and they are not going to change that. (Good!).

As for infinite RR movement - well, that obviously imbalances the end-games pretty seriously. I want both roads and RR:s, but the movement-rules must be tweaked one way or the other.

Compare this to ships and airplanes.

Also railroads are extremely important strategically. Germany built its railways in anticipation of a two-front war. Some war plans were devised by examining railroad systems.

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 05-15-2001 04:11 AM I personally don't have any problems with units moving at infinite speeds along railroads. This is counterbalanced by their acutal low movement points. So while they can get anywhere fast, they can't fight many times.

I believe the biggest reservations stem from the AI being keen to railroad every tile within their city radii and then inadequately guard them. Playing against human opponents you deserve to lose if you make that mistake. Playing the AI you want a rule tweak to make it harder to take the city of your choice having bust through the border guard. Assigning a small but real cost to each tile crossed or by forcing you to 'occupy' enemy rail tiles before another of your units can use them are possibilities for achieveing this. An alternative is to produce such a strong AI that it is redundant.

Your point about infinite sea and air movement is well made. Ships should certainly have comparatively higher movement points in the modern era and airplanes should be able to fly anywhere they want provided they can stop to refuel every 8-12 tiles. The only reason for not allowing them is game balance, which is precisely where infinite rail movement causes problems too.

And to all you that are complaining about moving one square in 20 years, GET OVER IT. Buy a traditional wargame where the game's real time is only a few years. We're talking about a span of 6000 years here, so there is no way to represent reality based movement without the game taking years to play.

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 05-15-2001 04:11 AM I personally don't have any problems with units moving at infinite speeds along railroads. This is counterbalanced by their acutal low movement points. So while they can get anywhere fast, they can't fight many times. Compare this to ships and airplanes. Also railroads are extremely important strategically. Germany built its railways in anticipation of a two-front war. Some war plans were devised by examining railroad systems. Let things as they are now.

How is this counterbalanced by their actual low MPs? Some units like howitzers, maybe have with only 2 MPs but tanks have 4 MPs as does Mech Infantry.

I agree that railroads are strategically important. But if roads have 3x movement and railroads say have 4x or even 5x, they will still be important. I mean at 5x, you could move 20 tiles in one turn!

I simply don't see any value in gameplay and definitely none in realism to have infinite movement railroads.

quote: Originally posted by polymths on 05-15-2001 03:28 PM I agree that railroads are strategically important. But if roads have 3x movement and railroads say have 4x or even 5x, they will still be important. I mean at 5x, you could move 20 tiles in one turn!

Should it be 4x or 5x? Lets take another look at the tank-move example:

I mean, do trains on railroads travel faster because there are tanks on them as opposed to slow units like infantry?

Just my ideas.

I agree with the FIXED movement of railroads and the use of TRAINS as well as LOAD/UNLOAD costs. Unlimited rail mvt is totally unbalancing.